Tropical Paradise

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FC: 2o12 NSA Sportfolio

2: Team Trials | 2o11

4: Swimming | The swimming test that we did for our team trials was in the 25 metre pool. | Our testing set was 300 metres of swimming as fast as you can no stopping: free, free, under, free, free, free, under, free, free, free, under, free. | *an under is when you swim the entire length of the pool underwater!

5: Figures | & | Positions | VERTICAL | Figures at Nationals

6: One part of our team trials was figures. Figures are the individual portion of synchro that you do to help raise your team's routine score. | The figures that we were tested on were: -Ibis whole figure -Kip from layout to split -Knight from the ballet leg to the bent knee -Cyclone whole figure | We were also tested on our positions, which were left leg crane, right leg aurora, vertical and right leg splits. | Crane Position | Knight/Aurora Position

13: This year, we have five competitions: -Provincial Qualifier in Calgary -Michelle Cameron Invitational in Calgary -Provincials in Edmonton -Westerns in Winnipeg -Nationals in Victoria

14: The first three meets are really just practice meets because there isn't any real competition. The Aquabelles are the best club in Western Canada, so Westerns and Nationals are really the only times we have competition. At the Provincial Qualifier, we came second in team and combo (to the other Aquabelle team), fourth in duet and I came sixth in figures. At Michelle Cameron, we also came | second in team and combo, but we came fifth in duet.

15: Our first meet of the year was the Provincial Qualifier. We had to compete all routines and figures. | The next competition was the Michelle Cameron Invitational, and we competed everything except figures. | The weekend of February 17-19, we competed in Edmonton at Provincials. | Most meets we compete figures first in the morning, duet in the afternoon and team and combo the following day.

16: The figures we had to compete for the Provincial Qualifier were Ibis, Kip, Catalina and Flying Fish. | And for Provincials, we did Ibis, Kip, Gaviata and Cyclone. | Ibis | Kip | Catalina | Flying Fish | Gaviata | Cyclone

17: Duet deck drill!

18: School so Far... | Last semester, I had Math, Web and Online, Psychology and NSA. I did pretty well in all my classes and ended with an overall average of 83.5%. The final exam for math was harder than I expected, so I only got 65%, but I still ended up with a good mark!

20: Phoenix Training Camp 2012 | Our training camp in Phoenix this year was from April 13 to April 20. We practiced at the Arizona State University pool 6 hours a day. During that time, we did team, combo, duet and figures.

21: Just because it was a training camp, doesn't mean it was work, work, work the whole time we were there. We also did a lot of shopping and we had one day off where we went go-karting and we got to try out segways!

22: < Whenever someone got a burn, they got to put oatmeal on it to stop the burning!

23: We also got a very unique opportunity to train with Bill May. Bill is a synchronized swimmer from the US that was good enough to swim in the 2004 Olympics, but because he is male, he wasn't allowed to compete. He is currently performing in the Cirque du Soleil show "O".

24: INCREDIBLE

25: Nationals!

27: Unfortunately, Nationals this year didn't go as well as I had hoped. The first thing that we competed was combo. By the end of the preliminary competition, we were in 7th place. The next morning was our figures competition. In the warmup, I was feeling good and my coach said I was doing good figures, and in the actual competition, my coach said my figures were really good. The judges seemed to think otherwise. I came 74th out of 133. Last year I came 45th, so this was a big shock. The coaches later told us it as obvious that the judges were looking for the tall, skinny girls rather than the girls who were solid and strong. That afternoon we competed duet, and Alex and I came 19th of 30. The next day was team prelims, and my team came 8th out of 13. The last day of competition for us we swam both team and combo. After team finals, we ended in 8th place, and after combo finals, we were in 6th place.